


The Man Who Wasn't There

by Inches_Apart



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: M/M, Tags Will Probably Change, ghost!Richie, he's just a ghost and says a lot a of inappropriate things, that's all I can really think of tagging, that's the whole thing folks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-18
Updated: 2018-02-11
Packaged: 2019-03-06 08:37:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13407486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inches_Apart/pseuds/Inches_Apart
Summary: When Eddie and his boyfriend Bill find the perfect new apartment to move into, it almost seems to good to be true.When Eddie runs into the ghost that's haunting the apartment, he proves himself right.





	1. First Encounter

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, I had about 8 other things I should have been working on when I wrote this which is why it's kind of terrible but here it is nevertheless.

 

Eddie was beyond excited.

 

At the current moment, he and his longtime boyfriend, Bill Denbrough, were riding an elevator up to floor twenty-something in one of the nicer apartment complexes in downtown Seattle.

 

He and Bill had been together for ages. They had met during an English class their freshman year at the University of Seattle, started dating sophomore year, and decided to move into a crummy studio apartment together as two mostly broke college students working minimum wage jobs their junior year. Bill had graduated college with an already decent start on a promising writing career, and Eddie had found his calling in real estate. He wasn’t exactly sure why he went that route, but he did and he never regretted it. Selling real estate in Seattle was good money.

 

It also came with the nice added bonus that he was able to get first dibs on the apartment he and Bill were about to go look at. After what felt like nearly a hundred years spent living in the cramped and crowded studio apartment they had, even though it was more like seven years, it felt like it was time for the two of them to move into someplace bigger. Given, they also were no longer broke college students, so they could definitely afford someplace nicer than where they currently resided.

 

The elevator dinged open, and Eddie grabbed Bill’s hand and quickly lead him down the hallway towards the available room. Pulling out the key he had been given after he scheduled the apartment tour, Eddie gave his boyfriend a serious look. “This is the moment of truth. If this place is as nice as it seemed, we’re moving in and kissing our old place goodbye forever.”

 

Bill nodded. “Agreed.”

 

Unlocking the door, Eddie waited a moment and took a deep breath before pushing it open.

 

To both boys pleasant surprise, the place was exactly as nice as it looked in all the pictures they had seen of it. Maybe a touch too modern looking for either of their tastes, but it beat their old apartment by miles.

 

The kitchen was a nice and shiny silver with black and white tiles lining the floor and walls. Lights hung down from bizarre looking fixtures in several different places in every main room of the apartment. The far wall of the living room, located just beyond the kitchen and dining area, was made up entirely of windows that looked out over the city. To the right of the living room was the door that led to the single bedroom the unit had. The apartment was completely empty except for a rather large dining table in the dining area, a sofa and loveseat in the living room, and a bed in the bedroom. Eddie wasn’t quite sure why those items had come with the apartment, but he knew that they added a little bit extra onto their monthly rent and meant that he and Bill didn’t need to deal with trying to move their shitty sofa and bed from their old apartment into their new one in the city. It was way less hassle for them, which they were both perfectly fine with.

 

“Wow,” Bill murmured softly.

 

“I know right?”

 

“This is so fucking nice. Remind me again why we didn’t move out of our old shithole apartment sooner?”

 

“Because we were either too poor or too lazy to move out into someplace as nice as this.”

 

“Hmm. You’re right.”

 

Eddie snorted and Bill smiled at him.

 

Eddie really liked Bill. He was kind, sweet, and gentle, and filled with so much love and compassion that the seldom thought of himself first over others. He was hardworking and a dedicated man and Eddie found both of those traits highly respectable. Bill had once told him that when he was younger he used to have an atrocious stutter. It followed him for years, and it wasn’t until his senior year of high school that he was able to talk free of it, but only when he spoke slowly. Eddie remembers that he had initially mistaken Bill’s slow speech as some type of accent before he knew the truth behind his way of talking.

 

The two mosied about the apartment for a while, looking at every little detail the place had to it. As they stood together looking at the view of the city that the bedroom window offered, it was decided that they were going to rent the place. Both boys were more than just excited about it.

 

“This is great, Bill. This really is.” Eddie sighed contently as he looked away from the window towards his boyfriend. “I say we go talk to them about rent and all the leases that need to be signed and when we can move in, and then we should go out and celebrate. After several long years in that small little place, we’re finally moving out.”

 

Bill smiled and flopped backward on the bed. “Thank god! That place sucked.”

 

“You can say that twice.”

 

“That place sucked.”

 

Eddie lightly kicked Bill’s leg with a smile before flopping down next to his boyfriend.

 

“You know, I’m really glad we’re finally doing this,” Eddie said, staring up at the ceiling.

 

“Yeah, it’s about damn time.”

 

They two laid there in bliss for several minutes before decided that it was about time they went and got the apartment situation situated. As they both got off the bed though, Bill’s phone went off.

 

“It’s my publisher,” Bill said, sheepishly looking up from the screen of his phone. He was currently in the process of getting another book published and he had been waiting for this call for weeks. Even though the timing was a bit inconvenient, it still took priority.

 

“You go answer it. I’ll be here, just get me when you’re done.” Who knew how long that would be.

 

“Okay. Thank you.” Bill kissed Eddie before walking out of the bedroom, answering the phone as he headed out into the hallway outside the apartment.

 

Eddie found himself smiling as he stood alone in the bedroom. Today was a great day he decided.

 

“Wow. Okay, I gotta hand it to you two: _that_ was hot.”

 

Eddie freezes.

 

That voice wasn’t his, nor was it Bill’s, and they were supposed to be the only two that were in the apartment. He debates whether or not to shout for Bill, but if this person was a burglar who broke in, they would probably kill Eddie to defend their stolen territory. Eddie might dig his own grave by shouting for help. Cornered animals lash out when threatened. Bill would naturally come back, and then Eddie wouldn’t be alone and they could take on this stranger together if push became a shove. Though this person already knew Eddie wasn’t alone so it might not even matter. First thing first, he just needed to stay calm and try to address this person and see what they wanted.

 

Eddie took a shaky breath, feeling his body tremble all over as he slowly turned around to see… no one.

 

The room was completely empty.

 

“Ah c’mon. Don’t get stage fright now. I know you most certainly can perform, and I’m intrigued to see more if you know what I mean.”

 

The voice was now behind him, in the direction he was originally facing. He hadn’t even heard this person move. When he turned back around though, he once again faced nothing but empty space.

 

 _Okay,_ he thought, _maybe there were just some security cameras and microphones set up in the apartment that a hacker broke into and he’s deciding to play a trick on me with them. Yeah, that’s it._

 

He knew that was a lie though. No microphone could produce a voice so clear sounding. So real. He decided to ignore that flaw though in order to instead comfort himself and pretend that he definitely wasn’t potentially going insane by thinking there was an imaginary burglar in the apartment.

 

The fingertips that trailed briefly over his lower back definitely weren’t made up though. Nor could a hacker have done that with a computer.

 

Eddie jerked his entire body away from the touch. His shoe caught on the edge of the rug and he felt himself start to go tumbling down towards the ground. Right as he was about to accept the fated meeting his face had with the hardwood floor, a pair of hands grabbed him under his arms, stopping him mid-fall.

 

When Eddie looked down at where he felt hands grabbing him, all he saw was the indent in his shirt where the pressure was, but not the source of the force itself. Eddie felt like it wasn’t just his fall that was stopped, it felt like the entire world had stopped with him. He wasn’t breathing, he couldn’t hear the sound of the cars on the streets below, or smell the obnoxious amounts of Febreeze that was sprayed in the room. To him, it felt like time itself had stopped.

 

Suddenly, the hands dropped him and he fell the remaining three inches to the ground with a soft thud. Though the impact hadn’t hurt him in the slightest, his mind was left dazed and reeling as if someone had just whacked his head with a steel bat. He flipped himself over and scrambled backward until his back hit the wall. This time when he looked around the room, he wasn’t alone.

 

There, sitting on the bed with one leg propped up on it for his chin to rest on, was a man in his mid-twenties. He had curly black hair was seriously ruffled and looked like it was in dire need of a haircut, and straight white teeth that were visible as his freckled face gave the most mischievous smile Eddie thinks he’s ever seen. Holes stylishly littered the knees of his jeans and the body of the t-shirt he wore under his unbuttoned flannel, indicating that the clothes were bought like that and weren’t formed after purchase. His combat boots looked clean but were worn down from heavy use. His white eyes, magnified by the pair of heavy glasses resting on his slightly crooked nose, looked lazily down at Eddie.

 

Eddie sat there stunned.

 

There was a person in the room. There wasn’t before, but now there clearly was.

 

Eddie’s mouth opened and closed like a beached fish gasping for breath. His mind was dead, unable to come up with any logical explanation for what could be happening.

 

The man laughed at him. “You look really fucking stupid right now, Eds, lemme tell you.”

 

Eddie’s mind was still occupied with trying to comprehend the situation so he wasn’t able to properly tell the boy to piss off like he wanted to. Instead, he just remained unmoving on the ground, waiting for his mind to report back to him with its theory on what the flying fuck was happening.

 

The man lifted his head up off his knee, smirking. “I know Billy boy did a lot of tongue sucking with you a moment ago but I know for a fact he didn’t steal it, so why so quiet, Eds? Hmm?”

 

Eddie’s face naturally flushed which seemed to break his paralysis. He huffed, straightening up from his slumped position on the floor into something more dignified. His mind also came back to him with two things: this man looked vaguely familiar, and he looked like a ghost. Neither of those were very helpful when trying to come up with a witty retort to shoot back at him.

 

The boy glanced at the door briefly before looking back at Eddie, amused. “Your bf’s on his way back so I suggest you dummy up. Don’t want to look like you’ve just seen a ghost and spook him off, eh?” He cackled to himself, slapping his knee obnoxiously.

 

Eddie scrambled to his feet, looking at the figure wearily as he heard Bill’s footsteps approaching outside.

 

The man stopped laughing, pretended to wipe a tear from the corner of his eye with a sigh, and focused his white eyes back on Eddie’s with a deadly serious expression. “Get it?” He asked Eddie. “Cause I _am_ a ghost.” He laughed again right as Bill opened the door.

 

Eddie’s eyes shot over to Bill’s, looking slightly wild and alarmed. His boyfriend didn’t say anything, but quirked his eyebrows in confusion and gave him a warm and loving smile of reassurance. When Eddie looked back over at the bed, it was empty. Whoever that was that was just with Eddie was gone.

 

“Everything alright, Eddie?”

 

Eddie nodded his head, not looking at Bill. “Peachy,” he responded as he internally told himself that whatever just happened was nothing more than a hallucination.

 

The boot indent Eddie saw on the bed as he followed Bill out of the room begged to differ.


	2. Second Sighting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I could’ve posted this like three days ago but I hated where the story was going after I started writing chapter three so I trashed that like, 1K word draft and rewrote quite a bit of the Richie & Eddie’s interaction here to fit better because this is goin’ in a whole nother direction than I was planning on taking it four days ago. Oh boy, folks. 
> 
> Quick fun fact: at the same time I was working on this, I should have instead been working on my Independent Research Report for my AP Seminar class cause that’s due soon and the College Board is grading that and this is a dumb ghost fanfiction I’m posting on the internet. I have my priorities set straight. Don’t worry.
> 
> Anyways. Pray for my soul. Here’s some mediocre ghost fanfic.

Eddie and Bill had moved into the apartment a little over a week later.

Eddie hadn’t mentioned the weird man he saw in the bedroom to Bill. He didn’t believe in the supernatural or an afterlife, so the only explanation for what he saw was that it was a hallucination brought on by dehydration, a lack of sleep, or some other issue. There was no reason to worry Bill over something silly like that. He was already stressed out enough by the work it was taking to get his new novel published, he didn’t need to worry about the one-time hallucination Eddie had. Eddie would just make sure that he was getting plenty of sleep at night and drinking enough water during the day and everything would be fine. No need to worry about anything.

During the first few days in the new apartment, a small portion of Eddie’s mind was freaking out, wondering if maybe the man would appear again. But he never saw anything weird or out of the ordinary. Gradually, he forgot about the man and stopped worrying about the low possibility that Eddie would imagine he was seeing him again.

Two weeks in their new apartment, and the place already felt like home to him and Bill. They had unpacked the few boxes of their belongings they moved over from their old place, everything was set up, and the place was lightly decorated with the few things they had. There wasn’t a lot to their place, but it was more than enough for the two of them.

It was one morning on their third week in the new apartment that Eddie woke up alone. He had the day off so he was able to sleep in, but Bill had a meeting with the publishing company early in the morning so he was already gone.

Eddie felt slightly disappointed that he wasn’t able to wake up next to Bill that morning, but he really needed the extra rest he got by sleeping in. It had been a long week and he was exhausted. He was supposed to close on a house a few days ago, but the couple that was planning on buying it pulled out at the last second. That had left Eddie with surprisingly more work to do than he would have had if he did sell the house.

Eddie laid in bed for a while longer before finally getting up. Today was the first day in months he had to just be able to sit back and relax and not do or worry about anything. A few months ago, every free day he had had been spent research apartments for him and Bill to move into and planning their move. Now that that exhausting process was over, he could finally go back to spending his days off just simply enjoying himself. In fact, in a few hours when Bill returned, the two of them could probably even go out on a date, which was something they haven’t been able to do in months. Eddie had a feeling that today was going to be a good day.

He strolled out of the bedroom, feeling good and humming a tune that sounded suspiciously like “Walking on Sunshine” to himself as he headed into the kitchen. It felt nice to actually have the bedroom and the kitchen in two separate rooms, and not in the same room like their old studio apartment. He felt beyond relieved that the two of them had finally moved out. Seeing as how they had both graduated college and gotten decent paying jobs years ago, it made Eddie wonder why the hell it had taken them so long to do so. He supposed it no longer matter because they were here now anyway.

As Eddie went through the familiar process of brewing himself a cup of coffee, he noticed a note taped to the fridge. He smiled as he grabbed it, reading the few words quickly.

_Gone out to meet with the publisher. Hope you slept well! ^-^ Should be home sometime after lunch. Love, Bill <3_

Eddie sighed happily as he set the note down on the counter. He never understood why Bill always insisted on drawing out text emoticons on notes, but he still found it endearing nevertheless. Bill really was a sweet guy. Even in his absence, he was always making Eddie smile like a lovesick teenager.

After his coffee was made, he sat at the kitchen table, looking over news headlines on his phone. He finished his coffee slowly, savoring the peace and tranquility he was finally able to experience again.

After cleaning the empty mug that held his coffee, Eddie headed off to the bathroom to shower. A day off from work was no reason to slack off on personal hygiene. Plus, a hot shower sounded rather nice.

Stepping into the nice yet small bathroom attached to the master bedroom, Eddie turned the shower on and stripped while waiting for the water to heat up. Despite the warm temperature set in the apartment, Eddie felt a chill run down his spine. He quickly turned and looked over his shoulder, almost expecting to see someone watching him, but didn’t see anything. He rubbed his hands over his arms, trying to rid them of the goosebumps that rose upon them, and hopped into the shower.

The water was just the right degree of hot, and Eddie felt himself relax slightly as he showered. He tried to keep his mind blank, but for the oddest reason, he couldn’t help but feel like something was off within the apartment. Though his rational mind chided him for getting himself worked up over nothing, he found himself peeking out of the shower several times to confirm that no one else was, in fact, in the bathroom with him. He never saw anything out of the ordinary.

Five minutes into his hot shower, Eddie heard the sound of a door closing. Bill must have gotten done early. It was kind of weird he didn’t text Eddie about that, but maybe he wanted it to be a surprise. He remembers one time a few years ago, Bill got out of a meeting with his editor two hours earlier than they expected, and he showed up at Eddie’s work during his lunch break with a bouquet of yellow roses to surprise him. Eddie found himself smiling fondly at the memory. Yellow roses were his favorite, and it was always nice when Bill brought a few of the flowers home for him.

Eddie quickly finished cleaning himself off in the shower and hopped out, grabbing his towel off of the nearby rack. He shoved his face into the cloth and rubbed it dry. As he did so, he heard a very un-Bill-like voice wolf-whistle at him, and his blood froze in his veins. Quickly moving the towel down to cover himself, he looked up to see _him_ there again.

The man was sitting on the bathroom counter this time, still with his feet up on the surface instead of having them hang over the side like a normal person would have done ( _It’s gross to put your shoes on the counter,_ Eddie thought with disdain). His curly black hair was still as unruly as it was the last time, and his face had the same lazy yet amused look to it. He was wearing the same hole-ridden clothes, obnoxious combat boots, and huge glasses. Even though his eyes were pure white, he could tell that his gaze was focused directly on Eddie, and he felt his skin prickle under his stare.

Eddie quickly wrapped the towel around his waist, feeling his body heat up and turn red as the man slowly looked over his him.

“Aww,” the man said mockingly with a sickening smile, “is someone embarrassed?”

Despite Eddie’s mind screaming at his body not to react to his joke, he felt his face flush, answering the man’s question for him. Eddie cursed himself in his mind.

“Well, let me tell you, Eds” the man leaned forward, bringing his feet off the counter so he could get in closer, “you ain’t got nothing to be embarrassed about.” He winked, eyes still roaming over Eddie’s body.

Eddie shivered, not liking where this conversation was heading. “Who are you? What do you want?”

The man hopped down off of the counter, stepping closer to Eddie. “What do I want, eh? My, I must admit, it’s been a long time since I’ve been asked that question. Do you really want to know what I want?”

The man was way too close to Eddie now. Though he hadn’t needed it in years, Eddie suddenly felt the desperate urge to use his inhaler. He nodded his head.

“What I do want?” the man was practically purring in Eddie’s ear. His eyes traveled sultrily down to where Eddie was tightly gripping his towel as his hands came up to rest on his chest. The room suddenly felt very cold. “What I want is for you to get out of my-”

“Wait, are you real?” The question had suddenly jumped into Eddie’s mind and forced its way out of his mouth without even letting him think about it. He felt just as shocked by the question as the man looked to be.

He recoiled a bit from Eddie, his facade crumbling as he looked at him, bewildered. “What?”

Eddie felt like he was having an out of body experience. He pressed on, speaking slowly to hide how bad his voice was shaking. “I asked you if you were real. Cause frankly, I’m pretty sure you aren’t.” Eddie huffed. He wasn’t going to let this hallucination get the best of him. In fact, he wasn’t even sure why he was having one in the first place. He was pretty healthy and feeling absolutely fine today.

Maybe this hallucination was some manifestation of a subconscious fear he was having instead of being brought on by not taking good enough care of himself. Perhaps he was just probably worried about accepting the fact that there were no problems within his life at the moment, so his mind made one up for him. Maybe all he had to do was call the apparition out and it’d go away.

The man stared at him in disbelief, head brought down and tilted to the side so he could look Eddie in the eye. He never really noticed how tall the man was until now. “Not real? You fucking kidding me, Eds?” He threw his hands up in annoyance. “How could you honestly think I’m not real. Did you not hear that door close? That was me. I did that. How could I have closed a door if I wasn’t real? And what about this?” He punched Eddie in the shoulder, making him wince. “You feel that, Einstein? That real enough for you?”

Eddie rubbed his arm, wearily staring at the man. He looked like he was angry. In fact, Eddie would even go as far as to say he was literally fuming. White tendrils of smoke rose up from his body in waves, making the room drop to near freezing temperatures. “Okay, so maybe you’re ‘real,’ but clearly you’re not a real person, so what the fuck are you?”

The man gave him the most dumbfounded look Eddie’s ever seen. “How fucking dense are you? Jesus, you make fucking osmium look as sparse as air.”

Eddie looked at him, confused and slightly uncomfortable.

The man sighed, taking off his glasses to pinch the bridge of his nose. “Osmium is the densest naturally occurring element and- you know what? Forget about it. Look at me. Look at me and actually use the few brain cells you have. I’m a ghost, Eddie. A ghost. Make sense?”

“Jesus, you’re a prick,” Eddie mumbled, quickly trying to process the information. It made sense. His mind had theorized that he was a ghost, but not actually believing in them, Eddie had written that theory off as false. Perhaps he should have given it more of a chance, he now realized.

The man did seem to be just randomly appearing and disappearing, which definitely wasn’t something normal people could do. One second Eddie was alone, and the next, he was there. Eddie supposed that if he were a ghost, the man could probably be able to do that. Plus, the man had white eyes, which Eddie was fairly certain pure white eyes weren’t something that naturally occurred with humans.

Eddie nodded, thinking over the information. “I guess it’d make sense that you could be a ghost.”

“‘Could be a ghost’?” The man scoffed. “Lemme tell you something, baby. There is no ‘could be’ about this. I am one hundred percent a soul of the deceased stuck in between the world of the living and the dead.”

Eddie squinted at him, intrigued and confused at the same time. "I thought ghosts couldn’t touch things.”

“Oh, so now suddenly you’re an expert on ghosts, is that it?” The man’s face was starting to flush red with anger.

Eddie was confused and a bit concerned. “What? No. I never said that. All I-”

“Yeah, you didn’t say that. In fact, what you DID say was that I wasn’t fucking real.” The man was back up in Eddie’s face, practically shouting at him. “And now, to add insult to injury, you try to correct my existence?” The white smoke was flowing off of the man at an alarming rate now. Eddie wasn’t exactly sure what it was, but it didn’t seem exactly like that was a good thing. “That’s rather ghost-ist of you.”

Eddie barely had time to realize that ‘ghost-ist,’ which was in no way a real word, probably was the paranormal equivalent of racist. He honestly kind of felt like that was made up on the spot, but he didn’t have time to call him out on that. “Okay, look. This is all just a misunderstanding.” Eddie tried to correct. “You see-”

“Oh no, no, no. You dug your grave, Edward, and now you have to lay in it.”

Eddie wasn’t sure what exactly that meant, but the ghost was starting to sound oddly like an angered mom. “Was that a ghost pun?”

“OH! SO IS THAT ALL GHOSTS ARE TO YOU? SOME KIND OF JOKE?”

Eddie had no idea where this man was getting this stuff. He also had no clue where along the lines he had gone from being almost smooth in his act to essentially throwing a tantrum. It was kind of concerning. He didn’t even give Eddie a chance to defend himself before he continued on with his tangent.

“Well let me tell you, Eddie, what it’s like being a ghost. It sucks! There’s no way around it: this. Fucking. Blows. It blows harder than your mom, Eddie, that’s how hard it blows.”

Eddie didn’t think a ‘your mom’ joke could ever be scary, but when a ghost billowing a weird, white smoke was shouting one in your face as he practically threatened you, Eddie found that he was, in fact, very wrong about that.

“My existence is plagued with constant pain and suffering and anger, and you have the audacity to mock it, huh? Is that what you’re doing here? Well, let me tell you, Eds: I am going to make your life just as much a hell as mine.”

Eddie knew he should probably be pretty freaked out by that, but he was honestly more concerned by how the ghost had almost completely faded from sight as the smoke came rushing off his body as fast as water rapids.

“Does that mean you’re going to haunt me?” Eddie also knew that as soon as he said that, that that was the wrong thing to say.

The man practically snarled, moving into Eddie’s space. “Trust me, buddy, by the time I’m done with you, you’re going to wish you had died before you ever moved in here.”

Right as the ghost spoke the last word of his sentence, he vanished from sight, and Eddie was once again left alone in his bathroom.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OKAY, so I didn’t intentionally mean to use yellow rose as Eddie’s favorite flower, but it’s a fitting flower for him and I probably subconsciously got that impression based off this wonderful fic by killerqueer called Crooked Hearts that y’all NEED to read, it’s so incredible! I highly recommend it!  
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/13093371/chapters/29954988
> 
>  
> 
> Also, there’s probably gonna be more Bill next chapter. And will Eddie finally learn that the ghost’s name is Richie????? I sure as fuck hope so because I’m getting sick of this whole not-being-able-to-call-Richie-Richie bullshit that I made up. I’m glad that Eddie at least got to confirm Richie is a ghost this chapter so I can refer to him as “the ghost” at the very least. 
> 
> Anyways. Hopefully, the next chapter is coming out soon??? I can’t make promises but I’m gonna try. Also it's definitely gonna be way better.
> 
> Feel free to hit me up at https://the-barrens-are-ours.tumblr.com/ And please leave comments. I beg of you.


	3. Three Days Later

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoops, this took a while to finish but hey, here it is. I just got distracted by school and other works and what not. I've got like, three things in the works right now that are all way better than this so this sort of got pushed to the bottom of my priority list. Anyways

Eddie liked to think he was a rational, sane person. As of recent though, he started to doubt that more and more.

“So, what is the salt supposed to do?”

Bill, who was sitting down at the kitchen table with his laptop opened in front of him, looked at Eddie with so much concern he almost stopped what he was doing.

He knew it was silly. He knew absolutely nothing about ghosts. But, when Eddie had read how salt rings could keep out malevolent ghosts and spirits, he decided it may be within his best interest to try one. Of course, he wasn’t going to tell Bill _that_.

“Umm, it’s like the discount version of those fancy salt lamps, you know? The ones that are supposed to release healing and purifying natural energies?” Eddie had no idea if that was what they were supposed to do, but based off the way Bill nodded his head along in understanding, he either got it right or Bill was just as clueless as he was. “I figured we just moved into this new place, might as well try something new, right? This is harmless and supposedly good for the soul. Or something like that.” Eddie quickly turned back to making his salt ring around the edge of their kitchen, shutting his mouth before he rose any more suspicions in Bill.

Bill gave Eddie that look he always had when he knew something was wrong, and Eddie felt his gut twist as he continued to pour salt out all over the floor of their apartment.

He trusted Eddie with every ounce of his being. He would have died for him if he asked. And now, Eddie was crawling around trying to make a ring to ward off a stupid ghost that was beginning to seriously annoy him and was lying directly to Bill’s face about it. Lying was something you weren’t supposed to do to the people you love.

Although to be fair, Eddie didn’t want to get Bill involved with the whole ghost situation anyways. He could handle it on his own, no problem.

Three days ago, Eddie had been seriously freaked out when Casper the apparently-not-so-friendly ghost had threatened him. He figured the ghost would have thrown things around the room, turned into a demon, driven him insane, or anything equally as scary as that. But nothing like that happened.

Maybe he had just seen one too many horror movies and had a warped idea of what exactly ghosts are. He’s sure his local apartment ghost would agree with him there.

For some reason, the ghost had seemed completely appalled by Eddie’s lack of ghostly knowledge. Eddie wasn’t exactly sure where the man would have figured Eddie could have gotten that knowledge from though. It’s not exactly like Paranormal Activity 101 is a college course. Every idea about what he thought a ghost was had come from the ghost hunting shows Bill and their friends sometimes liked to watched when they felt like making fun of something. And Eddie couldn’t blame them. The shows were completely ridiculous.

Perhaps that’s why the ghost called him ghost-ist. He supposed stereotyping individuals was offensive, even if that individual was dead. And not commonly believed to actually exist.

Regardless, the ghost was sure determined to make his existence well known to Eddie though. But again, not in the way he expected.

When he woke Eddie up at night, it wasn’t by him grabbing Eddie’s foot and dragging him out of bed and down the hall, no. It was instead done by him _flicking water in Eddie’s face._

The night of the bathroom encounter, Eddie was very hesitant about falling asleep. He spent most of the night with his back pressed against Bill’s chest and with Bill’s arms wrapped around his waist, staring wide-eyed into the darkness. Bill’s presence made him feel a bit more protected, but he was still on edge, constantly glancing around the room to make sure that he and Bill were the only people there.

It was probably almost three in the morning by the time Eddie had slipped into a rough and uncomfortable slumber. He wasn’t sure how long he was asleep, but he knew it wasn’t long before he was woken up by a faint and small tapping feeling against his face. When Eddie finally cracked his eyes open, he saw the ghost lazily sitting on his nightstand, flicking water at him from Eddie’s drinking glass that was resting next to him.

As soon as the ghost saw that Eddie had woken up, he went from bored to smug so fast Eddie hardly even had time to notice the change between expressions occur. The man stuck his nose in the air, smirking at him in victory for a second before he disappeared from sight.

Eddie had stared at his night table, confused and exhausted. He had no idea what had just happened. After wiping the water off of his face, Eddie leaned back against Bill and had stared at the wall in bewilderment of the rest of the night.

Due to the fact he had gotten only a few minutes of sleep, when Eddie finally had to get up for work that morning, he felt a kind of tired he hadn’t experienced since he had to pull all-nighters in college. After shuffling into the bathroom, a look in the mirror showed that bags were beginning to form under his eyes. He made a face of distaste at the sight before heading off to shower.

Throughout his entire shower, he had expected the ghost to come out and start messing with him like he had done the previous day. To his relief, nothing like that had happened. Once he shut the water off, he cautiously peeked out and saw that there was still no one else in the bathroom with him. He breathed a sigh a relief, and stepped out of the shower and began to dry himself off.

When Eddie turned around to glance himself in the mirror though, he saw that a crude scary face had been drawn in the condensation that had formed on the mirror during his shower. He wasn’t even sure if scary was the right word for it. It was about as intimidating as the trademark Jack-o'lantern face. In fact, that’s exactly what the face looked like, with triangle eyes and a grinning mouth full of pointed teeth.

Eddie had look at the face for a few moments, in complete disbelief, before wiping all the condensation from the mirror with his towel and leaving the bathroom.

The rest of that day had gone smoothly for Eddie. He had gotten dressed and left for work as quickly as possible, deciding to buy breakfast at a nearby cafe instead of making it himself like he usually did.

Throughout work, he had expected to see the ghost lazily batting things off of his desk like a bored cat, but nothing unusual happened at all. By the end of the workday, he had briefly forgotten that there even was a ghost at all haunting their apartment.

When Eddie had returned home that night though, he half expected to walk inside and see the entire place on fire or completely destroyed or something like that. To his surprise though, all he saw when he walked in was the dinner his lovely boyfriend had prepared for the two of them. Nothing supernatural had happened at all that night.

The next morning, Eddie had gotten up, happy and feeling good. He and Bill had had a wonderful night together, and Eddie had slept soundly all night long. He went about his morning business relaxed and feeling fine. He didn’t even think about the ghost at all.

Well, at least until the ghost decided breakfast was a good time to start messing with Eddie.

He had been brewing himself some coffee and waiting for his bagel to finish toasting when he had noticed that the toaster was slowly sliding forward towards the edge of the counter. Eddie had stared at it, confused for way longer than he should have been. When he realized this was the doing of a now seemingly idiotic ghost, the toaster had finally reached the edge of the counter and tipped over. The cord, still plugged into the wall, prevented the toaster from tumbling onto the floor, but didn’t save his bagel, which fell out of the toaster and landed on his foot.

He stared at the toaster, then at the bagel, and then simply turned back to his coffee, ignoring both of them for the time being.

The rest of that day had passed in relative peace. He didn’t see the ghost at work or when he got home that night. He and Bill had gone to bed undisturbed, but Eddie had once again been woken up at three in the morning by water being flicked in his face.

He had squinted his eyes open to see the ghost sitting there once again, looking smug beyond belief. Eddie stuck his middle finger out at the man, and rolled over, burying his face in Bill’s chest. He figured the ghost would have gone away like he did last time, but to his annoyance, he felt more water being flicked at the back of his head.

Eddie had probably laid there for five minutes, desperately trying to ignore the flicking. At last, it got the best of him, and he turned around and knocked his own glass of water off his nightstand onto the floor.

Satisfied that that was the best possible decision he could have made, he rolled back over, sighing contently against Bill. He had nearly fallen asleep again when he felt the light feeling of someone brushing their finger against his ear.

Eddie snapped his head over to look at the ghost, who smirked at him and returned the middle finger he had given him earlier.

Eddie felt a growl of annoyance forming in the back of his throat. He quickly grabbed the edge of the comforter and yanked the blanket over his and Bill’s head. 

He must have disturbed Bill too much because his boyfriend lazily opened his eyes a smidge to look at Eddie. “What’re you doing, Eds?” His voice was slurred with sleep, and Eddie thought it sounded adorable. 

“I was uh, making a blanket fort? Because I was cold?” It was the best lie Eddie could come up with on the spot.

Bill’s lips curled into a delicate and loving grin. He lightly pecked Eddie’s lips with his own and murmured softly, “That’s cute. You’re cute.” Bill snuggled up against him and fell back asleep quickly.

 Eddie felt his face turn red. He still blushed every time Bill called him cute, even after nearly a decade together.

The ghost was gone. Eddie was left undisturbed the rest of the night, able to get an hour or two of sleep before the sun rose and started streaming into their room through the blind-covered windows. He was unsurprisingly up before Bill, so he headed out into the kitchen to make himself a pot of coffee. While waiting for it to brew, he opened up his laptop and started looking into ways to get rid of ghosts. Most involved having a priest or medium coming to his apartment and getting rid of the spirit through whatever ritual they did, but Eddie wasn’t going to get any other people involved. The next most common solution he found was a ring of pure salt.

“Do you know where we keep the salt?” Eddie had asked Bill when he walked out of their bedroom twenty minutes later. He had already gone through their pantry and spice cupboard, but he had yet to find the container of table salt.

Bill rubbed his eyes, thinking over Eddie’s question. His hair was sticking up in several places and he was only dressed in his boxer shorts and a sleep shirt. He always looked positively adorable to Eddie in the mornings. “I think it’s in the corner cupboard by the stove.” 

After a quick look through said cupboard contents, Eddie had the salt container in hand. He smiled to himself. He felt confident this could work.

Bill sat down at their kitchen table and turned on his laptop to check his email like he did every morning. Eddie dumped the remaining coffee from the pot into a mug and gave it to Bill with a kiss on the cheek. His boyfriend smiled back at him lovingly.

Walking into the bedroom with the container of salt, Eddie scooted their bed forward a bit so it wasn’t pressed flush against the wall. Deciding it to be the hardest location to lay down the salt ring, Eddie started carefully pouring the salt down on the floor behind the bed. He could hardly fit his hand and the container of salt behind their bed, but he managed to leave a nice trail of salt behind the entire back of the bed against the wall. Careful to not break the salt line too much, Eddie carefully started working his way around the entire edge of the room.

Once he managed to outline the bedroom, connecting the trail’s end to its original starting point, Eddie stepped back to admire his work. The line wasn’t even everywhere, but it was complete. Shaking the container, he noted that he used up almost all of the nearly full container just outlining the bedroom, which wasn’t even the largest room in their apartment. He made a mental note to buy more salt on his way home from work.

 Walking back out of the bedroom, Eddie decided he probably had enough to lay down a ring around the kitchen. As he started pouring, he noticed through the corner of his eye that Bill was looking at him.

“So, what is the salt supposed to do?”

“Umm, it’s like the discount version of those fancy salt lamps, you know? The ones that are supposed to release healing and purifying natural energies? I figured we just moved into this new place, might as well try something new, right? This is harmless and supposedly good for the soul. Or something like that.”

That lie was worse than the blanket fort one, but Bill was kind enough not to press. Turning his head back to his task of laying down salt, Eddie sighed lightly with relief. Connecting the two ends of the line together, he nodded his head in achievement. Two rooms of the apartment done, only a couple more to go.

Tossing the now empty salt can into the trash, Eddie noticed out of the corner of his eye part of the line being scattered. Almost as if someone had blown gently on the salt. But no one was there.

_Fucking ghost._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave comments, they make fics worth writing
> 
> Chapter Four already is outlined, so maybe it'll be done next weekend? Hard to say. It'll have more ghostly Richie than this chapter had. More dialogue too between him and Eddie so get ready for that y'all

**Author's Note:**

> Don't know when chapters will be posted. I'm tryin' my best, y'all. Feel free to leave comments though!


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